Chapter
12
HOPE REVIVED.THE WIND HAD NOW INCREASED to a hurricane; it had veered to the south-west, and had attained a velocity little short of ninety miles an hour. On land, the most substantial of erections could with difficulty have withstood its violence, and a vessel anchored in a roadstead must have been torn from its moorings and cast ashore. The memorable storm that had devastated the Island of Guadaloupe on the 25th of July, 1825, when heavy cannon were lifted from their carriages, could scarcely have been more furious, and it was only her mobility before the blast and the solidity of her structure that gave the “Pilgrim” a hope of surviving the tempest.
A few minutes after the topsail had been lost, the small jib was carried away. d**k Sands contemplated the possibility of thr
